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Emotion in gaming

Posted By: Chuck Bower
Date: Thursday, 11 October 2007, at 4:55 p.m.

Is it a good thing, a bad thing, both, neither...?

Last night's rerun of the WPT Season 5 from Bellagio was an interesting study. The six finalists were: Daniel Negreanu, Joe Hashem, Mads Andersen ("sports better"; they didn't mention his BG), a former New Orleans Saints football player (forget his name -- came in second I think) and a couple other Ams (one who was playing his second WPT final table, so experieinced).

Mike Sexton (who I do like) started off praising Negreanu like he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I also like Daniel and he is very good, but I think he showed he wasn't quite up to Mike's accolades.

Hashem, as usual, made his claim to being one of the top handful of emotional big name players. Andersen was the model of stoicism. One Am in particular saw a monster swing vs. Hashem. Guy went all in preflop because of stack shortage with AQ and ran into Hashem's QQ. Ace hits on the flop and I swear Hashem started to say 'mother f___' but bit his lip, apparently remembering he was on national TV. Nothing on the turn and Hashem needs the last Q in the deck to win the hand -- which he gets. Of course for every elated player there is one who feels like the wind has been knocked out of him. Here the hand loser (amateur) showed more class than the hand winner ("professional").

To finish the story (it was a repeat), Negreanu goes from big chip lead to finishing 3rd. Hashem goes from nearly dead (and playing like he wanted to go down in flames) to winning the tournament. Andersen never got a hand the whole telecast, finishing 4th if I remember right. Negreanu showed he was human and made some questionable plays when things started to go against him. (BTW, I turned the TV with ~45 minutes to go so some of this is from my bad memory, meaning I could be wrong about the final result.)

At BG we have some moderately emotional top players (e.g. Kaz, Fogerlund, Sax -- not all with the same styles :) and some pokerfaces (e.g. Gartner, Trice, Glass - usually :). And from what Andersen showed last night, include him in this latter group.

So, back to the original question but speak for yourself -- does feeling/showing your emotion help or hurt your game?

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